“Microsoft is a big company, with pockets of greatness and pockets of sadness to found ”

Comp & Benefits

Work/Life Balance

Senior Management

Career Opportunities

Current Employee - Anonymous Employee

Current Employee - Anonymous Employee

I have been working at Microsoft

Pros

Microsoft allows an individual to have a career maintained with one company because there are so many technologies to work with, and numerous organizations as well.

Cons

Policies around performance review are severly antiquated and do not have concrete, measurable goals that are guaranteed to further your career.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Get rid of any type of labels altogether (e.g. level 65, contribution rating, job title, etc..). For commitments, have 2 - achived and didn't achieve. Reward greatness on a case by case basis. This will help people focus on their job and ignore distractions like who got what.

Smart colleagues, lots of resources, decent pay, and great benefits. You get to work with software solutions and services that everyone knows.

Cons

The measurement of success for everyone is performance against their individual commitments; this puts focus on the individual's performance and not on teamwork or group performance. At best there is no reward or recognition for helping someone else meet their goals, and at worst the system can create outright competition between individuals or groups.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Developing software as a service and moving to the cloud is spot on. Really need to create more flexibility and be able to mobilize faster to develop solutions that competion is consistently beating you to.